Writing Spaces: Inscriptions On Architecture

Abstract

The interpretive challenge posed by the inscription has given scholars pause as well.2 As Freccero observes, “[t]he uncertainty of the commentators about whether the dark color is a physical description or a characterisation of the meaning of the phrase, its rhetorical color, suggests that they cannot decide whether the pilgrim is seeing or reading the inscription.”3 Scholars alert to medieval hermeneutics have engaged rhetorical models to explain the challenge posed by the text—referencing, for example, the disciples’ incomprehension in John 6:61 (“This saying is hard, and who can hear it?”) or Augustine’s discussion in De Genesi ad Litteram of the uncomprehending